Waking up in Vegas
by Jinxgirl
Summary: Grace and Rhetta wake up together in Vegas.


Normally, after a hangover induced sleep, Grace Hanadarko was dead to the world; even the weight of her very large and very heavy bulldog, Gus, settling on her ribcage normally didn't stir her back into unconsciousness. But even she couldn't ignore the near explosion of pain caused by a sharp elbow, knocking her hard in the nose, nor could she continue to sleep undisturbed from the rude awakening of her ass hitting the floor beside her bed as she rolled over- and off the bed entirely- in instinctive response to it.

"Fuckkkk!" was her startled, pained, and slightly slurred response to this; it seemed to be the only word her swimming mind was able to draw forth into consciousness. Blinking blearily past blurred vision, Grace attempted to pull herself into a sitting position, but when everything around her seemed to tilt and spin with this effort, she gave up fast enough, letting herself fall back into a tangled heap on the floor. She cursed again, more softly, one unsteady hand coming up to rub at her nose, missing entirely, and hitting her chin instead. She swallowed thickly, her pasty tongue almost sticking to the roof of her mouth, and took a slow breath, her stomach lurching at even this small excursion.

"The fuck?" was her more questioning attempt to ask, without yet opening her eyes or sitting up, what exactly had just happened.

"Grace?" was the equally slurred, uncertain response she received. "Are you here…? Where?"

No matter how disoriented she might be, Grace would always recognize the voice of Rhetta Rodriguez. Just knowing that Rhetta was present was somewhat of a relief; how bad could things be if her best friend of over thirty years was in this with her? She couldn't have fucked up too badly if Rhetta, the ever rational voice of reason out of all her friends, had been along for the ride.

"I could kill for an Excedrin right now," Grace told her, wincing as she felt her nose experientially, keeping her eyes just barely squinted open in an effort to adjust to her slowly clearing vision. The bright light of the morning sun was doing nothing to take away from the steady pulsing of her temples, though it was just barely streaming in through the unfamiliar and rather dirty-looking blinds of the room's window. She couldn't feel any blood coming out of her nostrils or any change in the bones of her nose; it didn't seem to have received any permanent damage. Still, she directed a glower in what she thought was Rhetta's direction.

"When did you stop hitting like a girl?"

"Hit like a…what?" was Rhetta's very confused response. Grace, still making no effort to lift herself up off of the floor, could hear the creaking of what sounded like a very old mattress as Rhetta shifted her body on the bed, groaning aloud as though in response to her own body's protests at the movement. A few moments later Rhetta's face came into Grace's line of vision, long hair in a snarled mass of tangles down her back, her dark eyes squinting without her glasses as she attempted to process what exactly she was looking at.

"What are you doing on the floor?"

"I don't know, why don't you ask your fist?" Grace shot back, starting to chuckle. She winced at the pain this added to her already severe headache, but looking at the dumbfounded expression on Rhetta's face, she couldn't stop the chuckles from becoming outright snorts of laughter.

"I did that?!"

"Well, it wasn't the flapping wings of an angel," Grace snickered, trying to keep her head still as possible even as she laughed. "Though Earl sure as shit would get a kick out of seeing it."

She started to pull herself up slowly, realizing only when her hand came into contact with her bare thigh that she was wearing not so much as a stitch of clothing. Rhetta seemed to be coming to the same realization simultaneously, because Grace heard her give a sharp inhalation, before she asked in a tight tone of voice, "Grace, what happened to my clothes?"

Now ignoring her aches and pains, Grace sat up all the way, turning to fully face Rhetta. Her eyes widened as she took in Rhetta's form, just as unclad as her own, and she couldn't contain the grin breaking out over her face, nor did she bother to avert her eyes, even as she attempted to keep her tone innocent as she replied.

"Looks like you took 'em off, Rhetta."

Her mouth falling open, Rhetta just stared back at Grace, something like horror bright in the surface of her wide open and suddenly much more sober eyes. But then the tension of her shoulders relaxed, and she broke out into guffaws of laughter, letting her body fall over limply across the bed so her hair hung down over its edge, partly brushing Grace's face. From where she remained on the floor, supporting herself with one hand, Grace laughed with her, helpless to it even as it continued to jar her sore stomach and pounding head.

"Yeah, blame it on me," Rhetta managed through her titters, reaching up a shaking hand to shove her hair back from her face, an action that did little to actually tame the locks that promptly fell forward again immediately after. "Somehow I don't think I'm the one who tore a hole in my bra and pulled out half the underwire, the last time this happened."

"At least I didn't leave a hickey on half your ear!" Grace shot back, her stomach still rippling with her laughter. "God, and I thought Ham was like a damn Hoover!"

The two women continued to laugh, their bodies loose and relaxed as they just let themselves marvel at the predicament they had found themselves in. This wasn't the first time this had happened after a night out of too many drinks and too many problems with their men, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Neither was bothered by it, on the occasions that it happened, and it had never caused any real tension or difficulty in their friendship, either within work or outside of it. Truthfully, as many flings, affairs, and hasty hook ups as Grace had been involved in, whatever it was she had with Rhetta, every now and again, was one of the easiest and most enjoyable. Whatever it was that people said about women, the reality was that in Grace's experience, it was men who tended to make things a bigger deal than they should be.

"Do you remember how we got here?" Rhetta managed to ask when her laughter had mostly subsided, running a finger through the snags in her hair in an effort to somewhat tame it.

Grace shook her head, still chuckling slightly. "Nope. Guess today's gonna be an adventure, right?"

She extended a hand up to Rhetta, waving her fingers in a grasping motion. "Help me up, Muhammad Ali."

Rhetta grasped her hand in hers, starting to give her assistance to get back to her feet and up onto the bed with her. But even as her fingers closed around Grace's, she froze, her mouth falling open again as she stared at their entwined fingers. Frowning, Grace looked up at her face, then down at their fingers, trying to see what it was that Rhetta was seeing.

"What? What are you looking at me like that for-"

And then she too saw it. The diamond ring on the ring finger of her left hand, a ring she was very familiar with, seeing as she had handed it to Rhetta on the day that she was married, over fifteen years ago.

Grace's eyes came up to meet Rhetta, and even she was aware of them widening in their sockets as she stared up at her. Slowly she tore them away, letting her eyes follow the darting path of Rhetta's as the other woman took in the gaudy glitter of the window's curtains, the portraits of Elvis Presley on the walls, and the prominent plague declaring that Las Vegas welcomed them to the honeymoon suite. As a detective, she was used to putting together more difficult clues than this to come up with a conclusion, but even so, she wanted to deny the obvious picture forming about them.

It was Rhetta who put it into words.

"Did we go to Las Vegas last night and have a drunken marriage…to each other?"

Looking down at the ring on her finger again, then at the two sparkly tiaras with hideously sequined veils that she had only then noticed at the foot of the bed, Grace's head inclined in a slow nod.

"Yep…looks like the fabled lesbian U-haul just might be finally running us over."

88

Grace had been a cop for over twenty years; she had hardened herself long ago to the worst sort of violence, the most vicious of crimes committed against other human beings, and the misery and suffering of those left to grieve. It wasn't that she couldn't sympathize and empathize with them; it was just that if she were to be able to continue to do her job, to stay focused on catching and putting to justice those who had caused such anguish, she couldn't afford to stop and really think and let herself fully feel for those affected. She had learned long ago to quiet her darker and messier feelings by loud, raucous joking and pranks, by flippant comments to disguise and distract from deeper hurts. She had learned to lose herself in casual sex and heavy drinking, all to keep at arms' length the hurt of others- and of herself.

But she had never learned to protect her heart from the pain of the people she loved the most. Any time one of her own people was threatened, any time they suffered, Grace felt it like a blow to her own heart, and her practiced shields and defensives were no longer there at all.

So when she opened the door, three nights before, to Rhetta's overflowing eyes, her trembling lips, and her heaving shoulders, to her stuttered words, unable to complete a sentence before she broke into tears, she could not keep her heart from breaking for her. As she wrapped her arms around her best friend in a tight hug, cradling her head against her chest, she could feel her throat tightening with her efforts at suppressing her own tears of anger at whatever it was that was hurting Rhetta so badly.

"He told me he loves her!" Rhetta sputtered, her arms wrapped so tightly around Grace's waist that Grace could feel her breasts heaving slightly against her own. "He actually said he loves her…that he loves us both, and he, he doesn't know what to DO!"

"Oh god…shit, baby, I'm so sorry," Grace murmured, one hand rubbing circles between Rhetta's shoulder blades, the other gently caressing her hair, scratching scalp lightly with her nails in an effort to soothe. "That asshole."

Face buried in Grace's neck, Rhetta continued to weep, sniffling with nearly every other word as she attempted to tell Grace what had happened. "He was in our bed with her, Grace, our own damn bed! I could smell her stupid cheap dollar store perfume on my own sheets!"

"You want me to kick his ass for you?" Grace offered, her offer not at all in jest. "Me, Ham, Bobby, Butch, you can have a whole team against his ass. Say the word and it's done."

But Rhetta wasn't yet in the mood for offers of retribution. Grace could feel the heat of her tears dampening her neck, her face working against her skin, and she kissed the top of her head, certain she could actually smell her grief emanating off of her.

"He brought her into our home, into the bed we conceived our children, Grace! I mean, god, I know he's had his flings, and I haven't been innocent either, but our own home, our own bed? She's twenty-two years old, Grace, she could be his damn daughter!"

"Bastard," Grace muttered, her jaw set, but although she held onto Rhetta, rubbing her back, her eyes looked back her, narrowed with intensity as her mind went to work, imagining every possible scenario of just how it was that she could avenge her friend. "You deserve better than this, Rhetta, you're a fucking catch and that asshole's had it too good for too long to even know it."

"He said he loves us both," Rhetta whimpered, a choked sob bubbling up from her throat. "He said he's confused, Grace. How the hell can he be confused about something like that? How the hell can he love his wife of sixteen years and a kid who could call him dad?"

And Grace had no response to that. Because as many men as she had been involved in, as many marriages and relationships she had played a large part in disrupting, she still could not explain how a man's head and heart could so consistently get buried under the instincts of his penis.

Because she had no decent answer to give to Rhetta, she simply kissed her bowed head again, giving her a tighter squeeze in her efforts at comfort. But Rhetta wasn't finished with her own questions.

"Is it because she's a kid, Grace? Is it because I'm getting too old and wrinkly for him to be interested anymore? I'm getting wrinkles at my eyes, gray hairs at my temples, my boobs are starting to sag, and if this kid with perky tits and smooth skin is rubbing up against him…is it me?"

Making a noise of firm denial in her throat, Grace pushed Rhetta back from her gently, one hand firmly grasping her shoulder, the other lifting up her face to look her in the eyes. She kept her hand on Rhetta's cheek, cupping her face as she spoke to her fiercely, trying to force the words to settle into her mind and heart to replace the ones she had spoken in self criticism.

"Rhetta Rodriguez, do not for one second make that pig doubt yourself or the smoking hot piece of ass that you are. If he can't handle a real woman, if he's got to settle for a little girl who's probably used to four inch dicks, then that's his own damn problem."

Rhetta's head drooped slightly, and she took a slow breath in, then released it out, letting her shoulders rise and fall under Grace's hand. She nodded slightly, sniffling again, and as Grace's thumb gently swiped two tears out of the corner of her eyes, she leaned her head back against the other woman's shoulder, relaxing her body against her.

"What did you say to him?" Grace asked her, genuinely curious as to exactly how much damage Ronnie had managed to provoke upon himself.

Rhetta chuckled darkly, her lips curving up into a rueful smile. "Well I told him the next time he wants to stick his dick into something, it better be a blender or a toaster, and a few of his favorite golf clubs missed his head and made dents in the wall instead."

Grace laughed out loud, pleased when Rhetta laughed with her briefly, before leaning back against her with a sigh. But at least her tears were gone now, even as her sadness remained over her like a heavy blanket covering her skin.

"What am I going to do, Grace? What am I supposed to say to him? What am I supposed to tell the kids?"

Grace didn't think about her reply to her; it just came out, an idea that seemed as soon as she spoke it to be a good one, however impulsive it might be.

"You're gonna tell them that you're taking a vacation to Vegas with Aunt Grace, and that's exactly what you're gonna do."

Rhetta had pulled away from her slightly, eyebrows arching as she met Grace's eyes.

"Seriously?"

Grace had smiled, nodding, and raised an eyebrow of her own.

"Of course. We're both overdue for a vacation. Seems to me that's the thing to do."

88

Some 72 hours later, from where she lay in a boneless heap beside Rhetta on their hotel bed, limbs sweaty and overlapping slightly, Grace's brow furrowed as she tried to think through the events that had lead them up to this point. Three days ago, she had been if not exactly single- she never could figure out where the hell it was she and Ham stood with each other, exactly- at least she had definitely been unmarried. This morning, there seemed to be a pretty good chance she was not only married, but involved in a lesbian marriage to her best friend of thirty years, and her brain was still too fogged with alcohol to figure out exactly how this had happened.

Rhetta too was puzzling through this, although her efforts seemed to be less of the methodical attempts to piece together a chain of events, and more of the borderline frantic nature.

"But Grace, how could this actually have happened? We couldn't have got married. They can't just hand over a wedding license to two people like nothing, like it's a damn coloring book! Anyway, we'd have to have a copy if that had happened, wouldn't we?"

Grace craned her neck, squinting her eyes to make out a piece of paper sticking off the edge of the TV screen.

"Uh, Rhetta, would that certificate looking thing over there that says something about the state of Nevada be it?"

"What…nooo," Rhetta gasped, blinking several times as she too squinted to read the largest words on the document Grace was referring to. "Oh Grace, no. How could this have happened?"

She covered her face with one hand, her thumb rubbing at the skin between her eyes as she shook her head slightly, one arm thrown dramatically over Grace's chest. Grace chuckled, not at all inclined to move it as she answered her.

"Well, lots of shots, and being in a place attached to a Vegas quickie marriage chapel probably explains most of it."

"This is all your fault," Rhetta accused, sitting up and pointing a finger in Grace's direction. "Come to Vegas with me, Rhetta, you said, we'll get drunk and have a good time, you said-"

"Well we obviously got that much accomplished, didn't we?" Grace pointed out, gesturing to their still nude bodies and chuckling again. "It was the marriage part we didn't figure for."

"That was your fault too!" Rhetta accused, still pointing. "You picked this motel, you wanted to go out dancing!"

"Well you wore that dress with your tits popped up high enough to practically touch your chin, I guess I couldn't help myself," Grace half smirked, leaning back against one of the pillows and half shutting her eyes.

"Grace, you TOLD me to wear that dress!"

"It looks good on you," Grace shrugged, not denying this. "You needed this, Rhetta. You needed to go out and have fun and look hot and know it. You needed someone to remind you how damn amazing you are and how sexy you are, twenty-two year olds be damned. And anyway, it wasn't my idea to go and get married, that was all on you."

Rhetta drew in a breath, one hand moving up to cover her chest dramatically. "Grace, it most certainly was not!"

"Sure it was, I remember now," Grace persisted, opening her eyes all the way and sitting up a little to look over at Rhetta. "You were talking about Ronnie, how you only married him in the first place because you thought you were pregnant, and then it turned out you weren't and you had just missed a period because you'd been working out for a few weeks. Then you were talking about how he doesn't even try in bed anymore-"

"Right, and that's when you started saying how men are pigs," Rhetta nodded, narrowing her eyes at her. "Exactly, Grace, you were setting me up for your crazy ideas that ended us up here!"

She gestured to the bed; despite her dismay, however, neither she nor Grace were making any moves to cover themselves or get dressed. There didn't seem any need for it, given their familiarity with each other even before their apparent nuptials.

"No, no," Grace persisted, shaking her head. "No, Rhetta, this one's on you. We were trash talking men, and you were saying the only reason any woman even marries a man is because society encourages it, and no one who really had a choice would actually go with that-"

"And you pointed out that as of last year, we all do have a choice," Rhetta interrupted, referencing the 2015 law making same sex marriage legal in all states. "Exactly, Grace, this was all you-"

"And," Grace interrupted her back, shaking her head. "And you said that if you had the same choice then that you do now, that you wouldn't have married Ronnie, you would have picked a woman who actually gave a damn about you, and I said right, a woman as great as me-"

"And then I said…I said that I would have chosen you," Rhetta said slowly, as the realization began to sink in. "And you said…you said mistakes can be remedied…"

"And then you said, hell, they can be remedied right here, right now," Grace finished, with an emphatic nod. "And that's when you said let's do it, Grace, let's go get fucking married."

"Shit, you're right," Rhetta groaned, rubbing both hands over her face. "Damn!"

"Well, I say no harm done," Grace shrugged, even as her lips quirked into a smirk. "You weren't wrong about men being pigs, and us together, no one can deny that's fucking hot. Maybe you're the one person out there that's gonna finally tie me down. You were gonna divorce Ronnie anyway, right?"

"But Grace, I planned to divorce my first spouse before I hook up with my second!" Rhetta cried, removing her hands from her face and turning towards Grace with widened eyes. "Do you realize I'm now a polygamist?"

As this new thought occurred to her, her eyes brightened, and new hope came into her tone. "Wait a minute, that's right, I am a polygamist. That means this marriage wasn't legal, and that means it isn't binding, document or not. That means we don't even have to get it annulled. Without my first marriage dissolved, this one doesn't exist. We're home free, Grace!"

She pumped a fist in the air, then winced at the movement. Grace just tilted her head, eyeing her as she too thought through their current circumstances.

"True enough…if that's what you want."

"What do you mean if that's what I want?" Rhetta frowned, shifting closer towards her to look her in the face. "I don't want to be breaking the law, Grace. For a forensics investigator, that's fairly bad form."

"I don't mean that," Grace waved a lazy hand, explaining. "But think about it. How many times have we found ourselves ending up like this, Rhetta? How many men have I blown through, literally, without giving a damn about any of them as much as I always have about you? And how many times have you tried again and again with Ronnie with neither of you getting what you want or need?"

Rhetta was quiet, considering this, as Grace continued.

"I mean, shit, Rhetta, we've been building up sexual tension since we practiced making out on each other's Barbie dolls. You know I'll always love you and I'll always have your back, and I'll always do my best to make you happy. It's not anything I've thought about seriously before, but the world is changing now. Why the hell not give it a shot and see how things go?"

Rhetta was quiet for a few more moments, but Grace could tell from her expression that she was seriously considering her words. Watching her, Grace chuckled again.

"Either way, you're gonna be getting a divorce. Lucky thing is, you get to choose who to."

As Rhetta rolled her eyes at her, throwing a pillow and hitting her stomach, both laughed out loud, collapsing back beside each other. They lay still together in quiet, listening to each other's nearby breathing and relaxing with the other's proximity and the warmth of her body. And when Rhetta's hand came up to tangle with Grace's, Grace had a feeling that she had already given her response.

The end


End file.
